Calxeda

Barry Evans, CEO of Calxeda, on how they are utilising ARM’s processor and physical IP to create low-power chips for server applications

Calxeda, formerly Smooth-stone, Inc., was founded in early
2008 to develop a new generation of low-power processors
for web and cloud-computing markets, combining clusters of
ARM Cortex-A9 processors optimised with ARM’s physical IP
to enable power efficient servers.

The operating costs of a data centre are increasingly driven
by the energy costs from both running and cooling the
server systems. Reducing power consumption in the server
chips will therefore improve the P&L of a data centre or a
company with a large IT department. Also, as consumers
and governments desire to reduce overall carbon emissions,
every website hosting company will want to demonstrate
that they are working to reduce their carbon footprint. It is still
early days for Calxeda, but we believe that our technology
can enable systems with a throughput-performance/watt that
has never before been possible, reducing processor energy
consumption by as much as tenfold.

We chose to develop Calxeda chips around ARM technology
as their designs are inherently low-power, both when
running at peak performance and also when idle. The ARM
Cortex-A9 processor, with its scalable multiprocessor
capability, provides the high-performance needed in a server
application. Combining Cortex-A9 with ARM’s physical
IP maximises the performance without compromising the
processor’s low-power characteristics. ARM’s rich ecosystem
of software tools, application software and operating systems
will provide much of the software that Calxeda will need to
get a server to market. This software includes open-source
software such as Linux, Apache, MySQL, Perl and Python,
which are together known as LAMP-stack software.

Several OEMs are currently designing servers based on
Calxeda’s technology and we hope that the first lower-power
servers may be commercially available by 2013.

Calxeda is supported and funded by ARM and Texas Instruments,
along with a number of venture capital firms. See available for
sale assets in note 13 to the accounts for details of all of ARM’s
long-term investments.

“We believe that our technology can enable systems
with a throughput-performance/watt that has never
before been possible, reducing processor energy
consumption by as much as tenfold”.